


What We Dreamed Of

by Sororising



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: All Caps Secret Santa Fic Swap, And the icing was immediately-resolved angst, Captain America Sam Wilson, Christmas Fluff, Fluff with teeny tiny sprinkles of angst, Like if a cake was fluff, M/M, Polyamory, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 03:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8874169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sororising/pseuds/Sororising
Summary: Sam draws back from Bucky's kiss after a couple of seconds, not wanting to put any pressure on the moment to be anything but what it is. His heart is racing, much faster than such a simple touch should warrant. He glances quickly at Steve, who’s smiling yet again, in the most purely happy way Sam thinks he’s ever seen from the guy.Fuck.“I’m where I want to be too,” Sam admits. Between the two men he loves and who he knows love him, two men who have defied all the odds to even be alive right now; sitting here, warm and comfortable, he feels at home - At peace. In a way he’d once thought would be lost to him forever.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rc1788](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rc1788/gifts).



> This was written for the All Caps Secret Santa fic swap. Title is inspired by the line 'I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know,' from the film White Christmas, which I haven't seen in years but now really really want to rewatch.
> 
> [Samwichwilson,](http://www.samwichwilson.tumblr.com) I hope you like this!! I loved writing it :) and thank you so much for organising the fic swap in the first place, you should be very proud because there are now new AllCaps fics in the world that wouldn't exist without you :D
> 
> Also, shoutout to the amazing [Kora](http://www.gaygent-romanoff.tumblr.com) for being another secret santa, that was lovely to think about when I was worried about getting my gift up on time!
> 
> Oh, and this is vaguely set Christmas of 2017, in a fluffy alternate universe where nothing catastrophic is happening in the US.

Sam isn’t actually whistling as he walks along the sidewalk - because it’s freezing and he’s wrapped his new scarf around half his face, for one thing - but he kind of _feels_ like he is, somehow. And maybe that doesn’t make sense, but he’s in an excellent mood right now, so he couldn’t care less.

It’s been such a great day. He’d been waved off at the airport by pretty much the entire Wilson family; even the newest addition: his tiny and ridiculously adorable nephew, who he’d only learned was being named Marcus Samuel two weeks ago. Which still makes him tear up slightly - in the best way possible - whenever he thinks about it, and he isn’t ashamed to admit that.

His mom had slipped yet another present - most likely gloves to match the new scarf and hat, because even though he’s close to forty and has survived more than one war zone, she still doesn’t trust him to keep himself dressed properly, apparently - into his carry-on when she thought he wasn’t looking. 

Then his flight to DC had actually landed _early,_ which possibly heralds some kind of upcoming apocalypse, but Sam’s in much too good of a mood to dwell on that.

And now he’s heading back to the home he shares with his boyfriend. And also with his other - maybe, sort-of - boyfriend. Sam isn’t one hundred percent sure what Bucky would define his relationship with Sam as. Well. Most days, he’s barely twenty percent sure, if he’s being honest with himself, and that’s a talk the two of them should probably have sometime soon.

But not tonight. Tonight it’s Christmas Eve, and Sam’s spent an excellent two weeks with his family back in New Orleans, eating amazing food that he misses already - despite swearing after every single meal that he’s too stuffed to want to eat for days - and catching up with all the best gossip that somehow never seems quite as satisfying when he gets it from a phone call or Facebook.

He’s had the best holiday, with most of his favourite people in the world, and now he’s about to spend Christmas with another two of them.

He still can’t quite believe that Bucky’s managed to find his way into that category, but weirder things have happened.

Probably.

Alien invasions, and all that.

Sam walks up the drive, noticing that the snow has been shovelled away from it, into a neat line on one side and a very haphazard pile on the other. He tries to guess which side was Bucky and which Steve, but he isn’t sure. He unlocks his front door - the key doesn’t even stick in the lock like usual; _such_ a great day - steps into the hallway, and -

And walks straight into a tree.

What the actual fuck.

“What the actual fuck.” 

“Sam!”

Sam can’t actually see his boyfriend, because of - well, because there’s an entire fucking tree between the two of them, but that’s definitely Steve’s voice.

More specifically, it’s Steve’s _I’m feeling mildly bad about my life choices right now but I’m not going to admit to it, I’m just going to be defensive until you give up berating me_ voice. 

One time, Nat had told Bucky - in excellent and graphic detail - about how Steve liked to do fun things with his spare time like practice dodging Clint’s arrows.

Bucky had then confronted Steve with a rant that Sam hadn’t bothered listening to. Something along the lines of _will you never fucking change, serum only made you fuckin’ faster to heal, asshole, you get an arrow through your eye you ain’t gonna come back from that, fuck you._

The usual.

Steve’s response had been some weird combination of guilty, defensive and plain old apologetic.

That’s the voice.

“Steve,” Sam says, in the most deadpan tone he can summon. “Am I in a gay live-action remake of Sleeping Beauty? Is Bucky asleep on his stupid fake-sheepskin rug, waiting for me to hack my way through the foliage that used to be my very nice hallway?”

“You’re home early,” is Steve’s non-answer to Sam’s very important question. Probably he was trying to sound accusing, but it mostly just comes out kind of panicked.

Sam fixes the tree with his most effective stare. Maybe it will somehow manage to convey the look to Steve. That wouldn’t even make the top ten weirdest things to happen to him in the past few years. “Yes, I am,” he says, very calmly. “Because my flight landed early, my bag was the fourth one on the carousel, and the bus ran every green in DC. I am having a very, very good day.”

A day which he’s determined to keep good, despite this small obstacle.

Well. This six-foot-tall and very prickly obstacle.

Both those descriptions fit Bucky pretty accurately, though, which hasn’t stopped him and Sam moving beyond their relationship of antagonistic enemies into the nebulous territory of mock-antagonistic friends - and maybe even something more.

Sam’s definitely going to find a moment to bring up the comparison between Bucky and the tree at some point this evening, he decides.

It does smell nice, he can admit that much. The needles are going to be hell to get out of their carpet, of course, but that sounds like a Steve problem.

“Hang on,” Steve says, and then the entire tree moves a few feet back, enough for Sam to step all the way into the house.

He decides not to picture the way Steve’s biceps are undoubtedly flexing right now, because thoughts like that are just going to derail the whole pretend-to-be-mad-at-Steve plan he’s got going on.

“I fixed your door,” Steve says hopefully, poking his head out from behind the tree. Sam tries very hard not to think about the way his sister’s Golden Retriever looks up at him with literal puppy-dog eyes whenever she’s broken anything in the house.

“He broke it first,” Bucky says, from _behind_ Sam, which shouldn’t even have been possible, what the hell. “He got annoyed with the tree and took it out on the door handle.”

Of course he did.

“I’m going to die of a heart attack before I’m forty,” Sam says blankly.

He regrets the words immediately, because Steve looks like he’s been punched in the gut by a tank - though from the war stories he and Bucky like to swap when they’re feeling some weird combination of nostalgic and masochistic, that wouldn’t actually keep him down all that long - and Bucky makes a noise that - well. Sam doesn’t want to think too much about that noise.

“Sorry,” he says, honestly meaning it. “I forget I have immortal boyfriends.” 

“Ugh. We’re not immortal. And you’re not Bella Swan,” Bucky says, sounding disgusted - which makes Sam relax, because if Bucky’s in a frame of mind where he can rant about Twilight, he’s having an alright day. Sam makes a mental note that Bucky hadn't actually protested the _boyfriends_ comment. “And neither of us are fucking Edward, Jesus.”

To this day, Sam will never, ever know why Bucky had accepted Tony Stark’s 21st-century catch-up reading list as a genuine peace offer rather than the antagonistic move disguised as a pretend offering that it had very obviously been.

Maybe Bucky had realised that it wasn’t intended seriously and had just been trying to annoy Stark, which Sam can sympathise with. Personally, he wouldn’t have gone as far as reading the collected works of Stephanie Meyer to do it, but Bucky has a lot of time on his hands these days - okay, so that's not the best expression to use, thinking about it.

Sam had drawn the line at letting any copies of Fifty Shades of Grey within a hundred feet of the house the three of them are renting together, though. He has limits. 

“I don’t know,” Sam says in a mock-thoughtful voice, because playing devil’s advocate about crappy teen vampire lit with the former Winter Soldier is always amusing for him. Kind of surreal, too. But mostly amusing. “You definitely both have a thing about watching me sleep.”

“We don’t like watching you sleep!” Steve says, with his adorably outraged expression on. “We just - like watching you. And you sleep more than us.”

Bucky lets out a long-suffering sigh that Sam’s pretty sure he’d honed to perfection about a month after meeting Steve for the first time. “Not helping, Rogers,” he says. “And we’re _not_ immortal. Banner said we just have a higher rate of cellular regeneration. We’re still going to age.”

“Okay, nerd,” Sam says, both to break the small amount of tension that’s crept into the house, and also because it’s extremely accurate. He secretly - well, probably not so secretly; the three of them have got very good at reading each other over the last year - loves how much Bucky loves the future. All the weird, sci-fi-like technology? Bucky most likely knows more about it than Sam does at this point. If there was ever anyone destined to travel through time to the future - or be cryogenically frozen through time, and Sam’s starting to feel bad for this train of thought - then Bucky Barnes is a good candidate.

Not that Sam can bring himself to be glad for even a second of Bucky’s suffering, not even when he thinks about how they could never have met without it. He leaves that particular guilt trip - guilt quest, really - to Steve, who Sam knows is still torn between violent hatred of everything that happened to Bucky and a vicious sort of shame that he’s still relieved it happened, in a way, because without it he would never have got Bucky back.

But right now isn’t the moment to dwell on might-have-beens, or should-bes. Right now it’s Christmas Eve, and Sam’s home, and all the people he loves are safe. That might not be the highest bar in the world for his life to be clearing, but he’s had lower - god, has he had lower; the months after Riley’s death - no, not the time -

“I don’t think you can call anyone a nerd, Wilson. We’ve all seen your collection of toys,” Steve says, which is a welcome interruption to Sam’s thoughts. He quickly holds his hands up before either Sam or Bucky have time to think of a suitably mocking reply. “Yeah, okay, I heard it too. I meant your superhero doll things.”

“I don’t want to know what you two get up to in bed,” Bucky says, scrunching up his nose in a way that Sam very determinedly does not think of as _cute._ Steve punches Bucky - very gently - in the shoulder.

Sam glares at Steve, who looks completely unrepentant. “If you’re referring to my highly collectible figurines,” he says, knowing full well that Steve had been. “Then I don’t know what you’re talking about, because all they are is works of art.”

“You do have a weird amount of Falcon ones, though,” Bucky says, with that smug face that Sam loves, because when Bucky’s feeling comfortable enough to be things like _smug_ or _teasing_ it means that today’s a good day for him.

And it’s a good day for Sam, as well, and he knows it is for Steve, because Steve is easy to read even when he’s trying to do that terrible feelings-suppression thing he thinks is noble but is actually just irritating.

So, yeah. Good day all round. And Sam doesn’t take those for granted. Never will, he’s pretty sure, even if they all end up growing old together - at different paces, sure, but still together.

And that’s way too domestic a thought for him to get caught up in right now, especially when he needs to find a good comeback to that ridiculous accusation.

Sam raises one eyebrow, a skill which he will never admit to having practiced in front of a mirror back in high school. “Excuse you,” he says. “They made _action figures_ of _me.”_ It still sounds so absurd to say it out loud, like he needs to pinch himself every time. “And then they recalled them all, thanks to the Sokovia Accords disaster, so they accidentally made them all limited edition.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, not even reacting to the mention of the Accords. “So you just made a sound economic investment, right, Wilson? Nothing to do with the fact that you’re a giant nerd who got an action figure made out of him.”

“I mean,” Steve says, before Sam can think of a reply. Steve is sending an apologetic glance at Bucky, which hopefully means Sam’s about to get some excellent ammunition for future teasing. “You did carry a Bucky Bear around with you for a year. In a war zone. When we sometimes didn’t have space in our packs for extra rations.”

Sam could die happy right now, he really could. 

“That’s interesting,” he says gleefully. “That’s so interesting. Barnes, care to weigh in?”

Bucky, sadly, doesn’t look embarrassed. “He was the Howlies mascot, fuck off. As if you didn’t have a conniption that time we thought we lost him in Belgium."

Sam tries not to think about how he’s living with someone who unironically says things like _conniption._

Or possibly with someone who knows how Sam’s mind works and who says things like that to fuck with him. With Bucky, it’s hard to say which option is more likely.

“Anyway,” Sam says loudly, deciding that it’s time for a subject change. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that there’s been no explanation for the tree yet.”

“I just wanted to make tomorrow nice, that’s all,” Steve says, sounding less defensive than before. “You know. It’s our first Christmas - um.”

Sam just raises an eyebrow. There are so many ways that sentence could go. 

_Our first Christmas as a couple-slash-potential-triad?_

_Our first Christmas where none of us are being hunted by any governments?_

_Our first Christmas where we’re safe, and together?_

God, living with Steve is turning Sam into such a sap. It’s terrible, really; and what’s even more terrible is that he can’t help but love every second of it.

“Oh, come here. I missed you, for some unknown reason,” Sam says, taking Steve’s hand and pulling him closer, resting his free hand lightly on the back of Steve’s neck and drawing them closer together, for what starts out as a quick, soft little kiss - that ends up deepening, because of course it does, until Bucky clears his throat in a very unsubtle interruption.

Sam draws back and glances over at Bucky, to make sure that he isn’t actually uncomfortable right now. He’s watching the two of them with a small smile on his face, though, one that he quickly covers up with another cough and a not-very-convincing roll of his eyes.

Aw.

“Our first Christmas, huh,” Sam says, and he might be looking at Steve but he’s talking to Bucky as well, and maybe to himself, because yeah, technically they’ve all known each other for longer than a year, but - it _is_ their first real Christmas, in so many ways, and who is Sam to say Steve shouldn’t be trying to make it special?

His thoughts are turning much too sappy for someone who’d been determined to hold onto at least a kind of mild annoyance about the giant tree that had appeared in their house, he decides.

“Hey, Barnes,” Sam says, knowing that his attempt at a long-suffering tone is veering way off target, probably into regions like _fond,_ ugh, what has his life become? Steve isn’t the only person he’d missed over the past couple of weeks, he can admit that much. “Tell me that Steve isn’t one of those super-Christmassy people?” 

He’s pretty sure he already knows the answer.

“One year he uprooted a bush from Prospect and dragged it all the way to Red Hook,” Bucky says solemnly, keeping eye contact with Sam as he says every word. “He made little ornaments out of newspaper to hang on the branches. But then he got a chest cold and we ended up having to burn them to keep warm.”

Sam is torn between horror and that terrible feeling you get sometimes when you’re in church and start feeling like you want to laugh out loud, even though it would be the worst possible moment to. “You’re fucking with me, aren’t you,” he says, trying to sound as confident as possible. “God, I hate that I don’t know whether or not you’re fucking with me.”

Prospect Park and Red Hook are a trek and a half from each other, especially for a tiny asthmatic kid, so Sam decides he’s one hundred percent sure that every word that he just heard was bullshit.

Ninety percent sure. Maybe eighty-seven.

“Of course he’s fucking with you,” Steve says. Sam narrows his eyes, because this could go one of two ways: Steve could be genuinely taking Sam’s side, or he could be joining in on the whole _let’s mock the only guy here who isn’t literally older than sliced bread._

That’s a fact that Rhodey had - unhelpfully - told Sam back when he’d first started dating Steve. Sam would love to forget it, but it comes back to him at very annoying moments.

“We would never burn newspaper, not when that was the only paper I could use to sketch on,” Steve continues, with his best innocent look, the one that still manages to fool half the paps even though he’s not actually Captain America anymore.

“I hate you both,” Sam declares. “I’m going to give your presents to Nat. She can use them for target practice.”

“You got me a present?” Bucky asks, and he _could_ just be keeping up the teasing, but there’s something almost - startled, or unsure in his expression, and Sam really doesn’t think he is. 

“Buck, you’ve spent the past month asking me what you should get for Sam,” Steve says, and Sam immediately stares at Bucky, because - what? “Stones and glass houses, remember.”

Steve has a love for cliched proverbs every bit as deep as Sam’s mom’s. Some day he’ll introduce the two of them; he knows they both want it to happen. God, that’s a weird thought.

But not a bad one.

“Shut the fuck up, Rogers” Bucky says, his entire face red. “It’s alright for you. You can just tie a ribbon around your -”

Steve chokes on thin air, and Sam quickly reaches over and puts his hand over Bucky’s mouth. 

Bucky _licks_ it, because apparently he’s five years old, what the hell.

“No-one is putting ribbons around anything that requires proper circulation of blood, because no-one here except me has medical training, and I refuse to do that,” Sam says, very firmly. “Now, onto actual important things. I’m assuming you bought decorations, Steve? Or are we just going to have a naked tree to stare at all evening?”

He puts his hand back over Bucky’s mouth before any kind of innuendo comes out of it, because _someone_ has to step up and make sure their Christmas doesn’t turn into nothing but an evening of one-upping each other with the dirtiest jokes they can think of.

They’ve survived four wars and a hell of a lot more besides, between the three of them, so they’ve got a supply of black humour that would horrify most people. There’s never any clear winner in that game - except when Natasha’s visiting, of course, when she wipes the floor with the rest of them.

But tonight is definitely not that kind of night.

  


* * *

* * *

  


Three hours later, Sam still hasn’t decided whether Steve’s Christmas obsession is cute, tragic, or just plain annoying.

Or some combination of all three.

The tree is in the corner of the living room, draped with fairy lights that Sam had dug out from an old box of his college dorm-room stuff, and all their presents are piled underneath. Steve had wanted to draw an angel for the top, but he’s such a perfectionist when it comes to his sketching, and Sam hadn’t wanted the decorating to take the rest of the evening, so he and Bucky had talked Steve into a star instead. 

The effect is nice; Sam can admit that.

“You’re never going to guess what it is, Rogers,” Bucky says, sounding about a minute away from pulling out one of the knives Sam _knows_ he’s got hidden on him somewhere.

Steve frowns, and squeezes the very badly wrapped present again. “It’s kind of - soft? But hard underneath?” 

Sam lets out a snort. “Dude. I know they had innuendo in the forties.”

“Shush, you,” Steve says absentmindedly. “Bucky, seriously, I don’t even like surprises. You know I don’t. Can I just open one thing now?”

“No you fuckin’ can’t,” Bucky says, dropping easily into the Brooklyn drawl that always makes Steve get that weird half-happy half-tragic look on his face - yeah, that’s the one. “I’m serious. Bad things will happen if you don’t put it the fuck down and go make me hot chocolate.”

“Um. It’s not going to explode, is it?” Steve asks, looking at the package with a wariness that _still_ isn’t the correct amount of wariness for someone holding a potential bomb.

If Sam could give Steve a self-preservation instinct - just one, not even the regular human amount - for Christmas, it would have been neatly wrapped up and waiting since April.

“It fucking well will if you don’t stop messing with it,” Bucky says darkly.

Sam tries to channel the expression he puts on whenever he’s trying to convince one of the more unruly Avengers to go along with his plan rather than whatever half-baked, harebrained scheme they’ve come up with. It’s remarkably similar to the expression his mom wears when she catches him sneaking bits of whatever meal she’s cooking. “Barnes,” he says, keeping his voice as serious as he can possibly manage. “If you brought grenades into my house, I will end you. I don’t care if you have reflexes like a fucking cat on speed. I’ll find a way.”

 _”Our_ house, Wilson,” Bucky says, raising his eyebrows in that smug way he has. There _is_ a smug way to raise your eyebrows, okay, and Bucky has it down pat. “Just because I’m an international fugitive from justice and couldn’t sign the lease doesn’t mean I don’t live here.”

“You’re not a fugitive, Buck,” Steve says, immediately and very predictably. “You’re just - slightly wanted. Um.”

Bucky looks like he desperately wants to make a snarky comeback, but isn’t able to because he’ll start laughing as soon as he opens his mouth.

“I’m going to make hot chocolate,” Steve says, very wisely, putting the present back under the tree - Sam thinks it’s kind of nice to have a tree to put their presents under, really. He might not admit it out loud, but it’s a safe enough thought to keep to himself.

Probably he’ll end up mentioning it to Steve sometime over the next couple of days, and Steve will get that cute little bashful smile, and Sam will have to kiss him before he says something highly embarrassing and sappy, and -

And he’s getting distracted.

Besides, Steve messing around with that present had reminded him of something.

Sam nudges Bucky with his elbow, making sure to move slow enough that Bucky won’t get jumpy and do something awkward and un-holiday-like, such as try to stab Sam with the wrapping paper scissors. “I could have helped you wrap your presents,” he says quietly, knowing that Steve isn’t technically out of earshot but that he most likely won’t be listening in. 

He can’t help but hold his breath for a moment, hoping that Bucky takes it just as the simple offer it’s meant as, rather than as some kind of patronising bullshit.

Conversations with Bucky can be either a bit of a mindfuck or a bit of a minefield, and Sam doesn’t blame him for that, or anything, but it does make him tread more cautiously than when he’s talking with, say, Steve.

“I once took down two governments in a week, Wilson,” Bucky says, but he doesn’t sound annoyed. “I can wrap a damn present with one arm.”

Sam puts his hands up. “Alright, alright. Just offering.”

Bucky gives him a quick sideways glance. “Thanks, though,” he says, very quietly. 

“Anytime. Hey, have you thought any more about a prosthesis?” Sam asks, realising they haven’t talked about this in at least a couple months, maybe longer.

Bucky shrugs his left shoulder, then rolls it around in that way he does sometimes, like he’s still getting used to the absence of a weight he’d carried with him for decades. “Maybe,” he says, noncommittal as always. “I still don’t really want anything else attached to my body right now. Even if it’s something I can take off.”

“Makes sense,” Sam says easily, because it _does,_ and even if it didn’t that wouldn’t make Bucky’s feeling on the matter any less valid.

They hear a sudden noise from the kitchen - they both jump slightly, and then exchange commiserating glances straight after - and then Steve swearing loudly at whatever it is he’d just knocked over. Sam and Bucky look at each other again, this time with something that lies in a vague region between long-suffering and fond.

Steve comes in then, very carefully carrying three mugs of hot chocolate. He sets them down on the coffee table, looking way too proud for someone who’d just heated up milk and stirred it into chocolate.

Then again, judging from some of the stories Bucky’s told about Steve’s cooking back in the day, maybe not fucking up hot chocolate _is_ something for him to be proud of.

“Decided if I can open my present yet?” Steve asks, clearly knowing already that the answer will be _fuck no._

Bucky just raises an eyebrow and reaches out his hand for a mug. Steve rolls his eyes and hands Bucky his hot chocolate, obviously aware that that’s all the response he’s going to get - and all that he deserves.

“It’s because it’s something really embarrassing, isn’t it,” Steve says, instead of shutting up and drinking his hot chocolate.

Bucky just smiles. Sam narrows his eyes, because that’s the exact same smile that had appeared before Bucky and Clint had gone head-to-head in the firing range for the first time. It’s a smile that very clearly says the person on the receiving end of it has already lost this fight, whether they know it or not. “You were going to wrap your stupid shield and leave it under the tree for Sam before I talked you out of it,”Bucky says, all fake-casual and smug. “So I don’t think you have a leg to stand on when it comes to embarrassing presents, pal.”

Sam usually loves the biting sarcasm in the air whenever Bucky says things like _pal,_ but right now he isn’t focusing so much on the tone the words were said in as on the actual words, which -

“What,” he says. Apparently he loses the ability to use inflection properly whenever he’s confronted with completely absurd sentences. He should be immune to weirdness, after the events of the past few years - hell, decades; he can’t deny that the EXO-7 project had been the stuff of sci-fi - but he hadn’t been expecting something like _this._

Seriously. What the hell?

Steve is turning that shade of red that really should make him less attractive than it actually does. “It was going to be a symbolic gesture! It was hard to get it back, okay, the new Captain America should be the one to have it.”

“I was selected to be Cap by a fucking panel, Rogers,” Sam points out. “Being a superhero isn’t all about the symbolism any more, remember. Got a hell of a lot of red tape and paperwork these days.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “That’s not the point. The symbols are still important to people.”

 _To me,_ are the very obvious unvoiced words lying underneath that sentiment. 

“It wasn’t exactly a subtle plan,” Bucky says, the corner of his mouth twitching in that way it does when he’s not bothering to try hard enough to conceal a smile. “Like Wilson wouldn’t have known what it was straightaway.”

“I would not have assumed it was the shield, actually,” Sam says. “Because I would have assumed even Steve couldn’t be that level of _symbolic.”_

He says _symbolic_ in the exact same tone he’d usually say _idiotic,_ but he can’t deny that he’s just the tiniest bit pleased at Steve’s thought. He’s glad he hadn’t gone through with it, but still. It’s always good to have a reminder that the original Captain America is more than happy with the choice of the new one, and not just because they’re fucking each other.

Sam spares a second to laugh to himself about the media shitstorm that’s going to go down when that little tidbit comes to light.

Bucky gives Sam a very unimpressed look. “Really? You would have looked at the giant circle wrapped in red, white and blue, and thought what exactly?”

Dear lord. He was going to wrap his - well, Sam’s, god, that’s still a weird thought - American-flag, _epitome of patriotism-slash-nationalism_ shield in the exact same colours as the flag?

Of course he was.

“I would have guessed that it was a very large dinner plate,” Sam says, as primly as he can manage without laughing at himself.

Well. Laughing out loud, at least.

“Anyway. We should be listening to Christmas music,” Steve says, in a clear - and not at all subtle; not that anyone’s ever accused Steve of being a _subtle_ person - attempt to change the subject.

“No we shouldn’t,” Bucky says, switching gears easily - probably for a new round of mocking Steve; Sam’s very familiar with that particular look on his face. “Because you’re fuckin’ tone deaf and you always sing along, and it’s even more painful to listen to now I’ve got super-hearing.”

Steve, for some reason, doesn’t look at all insulted by that comment. He just looks pleased, so Sam assumes it’s some weird tragic-nostalgic in-joke from the thirties that he doesn’t actually want to be included in.

“We could watch Christmas movies,” Sam suggests, as a kind of peace-offering after - deservedly, but still - teasing Steve so much about the shield thing. “Netflix has a whole list of holiday-themed stuff.”

He switches the TV on and clicks through to Netflix, already mentally preparing his argument for why they should watch Die Hard followed by White Christmas.

“I watched that one my first Christmas here,” Steve says suddenly, and Sam pauses his scrolling on - fuck, seriously? On ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’

Of course he did. For fuck’s sake.

Sam knows, though he’s never asked, that when Steve says things like _my first Christmas here,_ he means the first one since his world folded itself around him and he woke up into a new one, a not-quite-unfamiliar world that must have been even more painful than a wholly new one would have been.

And then Steve, only a few months later, no real friends to speak of yet - Sam knows that it took Natasha a long time to break through into that particular category - had sat down, most likely alone, to watch a film about a man who walks through the echoes of his life without him in it, a ghost in a world that’s never known his presence.

Jesus, Steve.

Sam knows that the story, especially the ending, is supposed to be all uplifting and heartwarming, and it is, in a lot of ways. But it’s also - well, it’s fucking sad, is the only way to put it. Especially for someone who isn’t surrounded by people that love them while they watch it.

A thought strikes Sam then. Oh, God. Wasn’t it around Christmas when Bucky fell off the train? That would have been decades ago to everyone else, and precisely a year to Steve.

Not for the first time, Sam wonders what would have happened if he’d met Steve earlier. When they were both a little more fucked-up - well, _even_ more, might be a more accurate way to put it. When they both desperately needed someone, anyone, when they were at the end of fraying ropes every day of their lives.

Maybe things would have turned out for the better. Or - or maybe they would have fucked each other up even more. They’ll never know, and Sam can’t bring himself to be sorry for the way things ended up, though the price they paid to get here - he dreams of Rhodey falling, now, not just Riley - was much, much too high.

“Rudolph and the Isle of Misfit Toys,” Bucky reads out loud - it could be that his thoughts are running along similar lines to Sam’s; might be he’s trying to distract them all with something else. Whether or not that’s true, Sam’s still grateful to him. “What’s that one?”

“Um,” Sam says, trying to think of a way to not answer truthfully. He fails, but hopefully Steve and Bucky won’t notice the connections to their own lives. “It’s about a bunch of toys. Obviously. But they’re all kind of - broken, or weird in some way. And then they all join up to fight this evil - look, it’s been a few decades, google the damn summary yourself.”

Bucky looks like he’s considering that for a second “Cool. So someone made a film about the Avengers?” 

Steve makes a loudly protesting noise. Bucky and Sam exchange a glance that Sam’s pretty sure leaves them both about half a second away from bursting into laughter at Steve’s expense.

“Fuck you both,” Steve mutters into his mug. “I made you perfect hot chocolate and this is the thanks I get?”

“It isn’t actually perfect hot chocolate,” Sam points out. “Because _someone_ used up all the peppermint essence making those weird candy-cane cookies.”

“You ate like twenty of them,” Bucky says from where he’s now half-lying on the couch. His voice is drowsy, and Sam technically knows that he could still spring into action at less than a second’s notice, because there’s never a time when that isn’t true, but the half-sleepy tone still makes him smile to himself.

“Maybe we could put toothpaste in it instead,” Steve says doubtfully.

The fuck?

Sam doesn’t think he and Bucky have ever been so united in their lives, and he is one hundred percent counting the time they tried to take down that spider-child in Berlin. They both fix Steve with the kind of look that wouldn’t be inappropriate if they were shooting lasers out of their eyes.

“We are _never_ doing that,” Sam says fervently. “What the _fuck,_ Rogers?”

“I never thought I’d see the day when something topped your idea of mixing tree bark into potato stew, ugh,” Bucky says, and Sam makes an even more disgusted face at that. He hopes it’s Bucky bullshitting him again, but this time he really isn’t sure.

“Ungrateful,” Steve says, looking like he’s trying to conceal a grin - and failing, naturally. He stands up. “I’m going to go get the last of the cookies. See if I share them with you two, after that.” He bends down to give Sam a quick kiss, even though he’s literally going twenty feet away.

Not that Sam minds.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says, out of nowhere, as soon as Steve’s left the room.

Sam isn’t paying much attention; he’s trying to decide what his favourite Die Hard quote is. Well, _yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker,_ obviously, but his second-favourite is trickier. It takes him a couple seconds to realise that Bucky just said something to him.

“What?” he asks, replaying the past minute in his mind. “What are you saying sorry for? Steve’s the only one who should be apologising right now, for that godawful toothpaste suggestion.”

“We know it can’t be easy for you,” Bucky says, quiet and solemn.

Sam looks at him. He’s paying attention now, but Bucky’s expression isn’t giving much away. “What can’t?”

“You lost Riley. Steve lost - me.”

Oh.

 _And you came back,_ Sam thinks, completing the sentence easily in his mind - except he doesn’t really need to, because it’s not like he hasn’t had the same thought a thousand times over.

It still hurts, a little, that particular thought. Of course it does. He isn’t sure he ever wants it to stop hurting. There’s a certain kind of pain that would be worse for its absence, he thinks, and it’s a dull ache, now, not the wound he’d deliberately kept open for so long.

Sam rolls his eyes. “Come here, you asshole,” he says, holding the arm closest to Bucky out, and he doesn’t end up sounding even the tiniest bit annoyed. 

Not that he’d been trying very hard to, he admits.

Bucky looks wary for a moment, but Sam ignores that - if he paid attention to everything that makes Bucky look _wary,_ he’d end up being suspicious of everything in his fucking house, from the coffee maker to the way the bathroom mirror is apparently weirdly smooth, which makes no sense at all.

“Can we switch sides?”

Sam frowns. “Sure,” he says, wanting to ask why but - oh, it’s kind of obvious why, when he thinks about it for another second. If they sit closer together the way they are now, Bucky’s arm will be up against Sam’s body. Not trapped, or anything, but not exactly with a full range of movement either.

Sam doesn’t move, but he shuffles over when Bucky gets up, and they move closer without too much awkward fumbling. Which seems kind of like a minor Christmas miracle, honestly, when Sam considers some of their past interactions.

 _So how did you two meet?_ he imagines being asked, by some stranger. 

_Oh, he ripped the steering wheel out of my car._

Not quite casual dinner-party conversation.

Bucky’s left side is pressed into Sam, now, and Sam wants to laugh out loud when he realising he’s half-thinking about whether or not he should put his arm around him.

“Oh my god,” he says, mostly to himself. “I am actually a teenager on a date at the movies right now.”

Bucky laughs, thank fuck, and shifts his body in some small way that Sam doesn’t really pay attention to, but which ends up with them in the perfect position for Sam to - casually, he’s still got _some_ game left - move his arm across Bucky’s shoulders.

“You always sat in the back row, I bet,” Bucky says, and Sam loves how - how comfortable he sounds right now.

“Excuse you,” Sam says. “I don’t know what you’re implying, but I’ll have you know I was a perfect gentleman with all my dates.”

Well. There was that one time he got a blowjob from the quarterback of his school’s football team in the bathroom of the movie theatre, but that doesn’t seem like information Bucky needs.

“Sometimes I’d sit in the back row with my date and Steve would sit a few rows in front with his,” Bucky says, in the musing kind of voice he gets whenever he starts thinking about the memories he’s finally learning how to process. “And we’d make out, but I’d keep looking sideways at Steve, and I knew he was trying not to look back the whole movie.”

Bucky hadn’t sounded sad, or bitter, but Sam winces a little anyway. “That sucks,” he says, knowing that it’s a ridiculous understatement.

Bucky looks startled for just a moment, as though he hadn’t known he was speaking aloud. “Nah,” he says. “Was just how things were.”

 _That doesn’t make it okay,_ Sam wants to say, but he guesses Bucky knows that already.

He doesn’t actually know all that much about how far Steve and Bucky have got with admitting their blindingly obvious feelings for one another. It’s not the kind of thing he and Bucky talk about, and every time Sam brings it up to Steve that just winds up with Steve trying not to feel bad for loving two people at once, and there’s only so many times Sam can deal with that particular issue without wanting to just sit Steve down in front of a thousand articles on polyamory and let him figure this shit out for himself.

They’ll get there, he knows they will. They have time. That’s a luxury not one of them will ever, ever take for granted.

And if Steve and Bucky’s complicated relationship isn’t discussed very often, well, that’s nothing compared to the third relationship in the house.

“Hey, Bucky,” Sam says, knowing that the fact he isn’t saying _Barnes_ will clue Bucky into the fact that whatever question is coming is - important, or at least not a joke. “We ever going to talk about this thing we’re doing?”

“Thing?”

“Don’t make me say it, fuck,” Sam says, seriously wondering if even his high school relationships had ever managed to hit this level of awkward. “You know what thing.” He shrugs, and Bucky leans slightly closer to him. “Or we could just never talk about it,” he adds, because it’s not like he’s _unhappy_ with how things are right now. He’d just like a bit of clarification on how many people he’s in a relationship with, that’s all, which doesn’t exactly seem like too much to ask.

“Second option,” Bucky says, lazy and soft, but he reaches across his body and squeezes Sam’s hand, just for a second, and when Sam thinks about it he realises that’s all the answer he needs.

When Steve walks back in, holding a plate heaped with cookies in his hand, his eyes only go wide for a split second at the sight of Sam and Bucky - well, _cuddling,_ there really isn’t any other way to say it. A moment later he’s smiling at them both, wide and unreservedly happy, as though he’s just been given the only Christmas present he could possibly want.

He sets the plate down on the table, and slots himself in beside Sam, leaning against the side of the couch. Sam moves so that a little more of his weight is against Steve, and Bucky shifts along with him, until they’re all curled up together in a way that should maybe be uncomfortable. 

It’s the most at ease Sam’s felt in a long, long time.

They decide they only have time for one movie, in the end. Steve votes ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ because of course he does. Bucky goes for the Rudolph-Avengers film, and Sam makes a solid case for White Christmas.

And wins, naturally, since Steve and Bucky refuse to agree with each other’s choices and end up agreeing with Sam by default.

Sam does have a moment of doubt when he thinks about how much the movie focuses on the post-World War Two years, but he realises fifteen minutes in that he needn’t have worried. Steve and Bucky seem to love every second of it. Bucky actually pauses the film at one point to tell a story that apparently even Steve had never heard, about a general he’d had in the year before the Howling Commandos were formed. And Steve either laughs or tears up - but in a happy way, Sam’s certain - at every single musical number, and at quite a few other moments besides.

All in all, it’s a wonderful evening, and Sam spares a moment to hope that any wannabe-villains decide to stay in for Christmas as well. He’d rather not have his first official outing as Captain America while he’s wearing the appalling jumper his sister had knitted for him, which comes complete with a detachable Velcro snowman.

“Hey, Stevie,” Bucky says after the movie finishes, sounding relaxed in a way that does _not_ make Sam’s heart skip any beats, okay, he’s a trained paramedic, that would be impossible and also embarrassing. “You didn’t want to go to Midnight Mass this year?”

Sam twists round slightly, just enough to see Steve’s face. He hadn’t even thought to ask that.

“No,” Steve says easily, not looking thrown by the question at all. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”

He bends his head a little, just enough to kiss Sam on the cheek, a sweet, soft gesture that makes Sam’s heart ache with the tenderness of the moment.

“Pass it on,” Steve says, poking Sam - less sweetly and softly - in the ribs.

“It’s not a fucking party game,” Sam says, but he knows he’s smiling, and he doesn’t care at all about the fact that he isn’t sure he could stop even if he wanted to.

He turns to Bucky, who looks at him with the most obvious challenge in his eyes Sam’s ever seen.

He leans in slowly, letting Bucky guide where his lips will fall, and Bucky turns his head at almost the last moment, meeting Sam more than halfway.

Sam draws back from the kiss after a couple of seconds, not wanting to put any pressure on the moment to be anything but what it is. His heart is racing, much faster than such a simple touch should warrant. He glances quickly at Steve, who’s smiling yet again, in the most purely _happy_ way Sam thinks he’s ever seen from the guy.

Fuck.

“I’m where I want to be too,” Sam admits. Between the two men he loves and who he knows love him, two men who have defied all the odds to even be alive right now; sitting here, warm and comfortable, he feels at home - 

At peace. In a way he’d once thought would be lost to him forever.

“Same here. It’s like a Samwich,” Bucky says, solemnly ruining the lovely, heartfelt moment, which is a skill he seems to take great pride in - or at least that’s what Sam’s guessing, from the grin on his face. Sam can feel Steve’s shoulders shaking with the effort of trying to keep from laughing out loud - a battle he loses two seconds later, and as the clock ticks over to midnight, Sam and Bucky give in as well, and they ring in their first real Christmas together with laughter, and with the knowledge that there are so many more years to come.

**Author's Note:**

> Awww. I can't believe this is the first fic for this ship I've written, I love these three so much.
> 
> Any comments are always adored. Tbh I really wish I'd found someone to beta this in time, I'm not sure it all makes sense but I want to post it today! So yeah would love to know if you liked it :)
> 
> Happy holidays, everyone <3
> 
> Edited to add: there is now a college AU AllCaps fic inspired by a comment from Tiarachel on this about a certain dreadful suggestion of Steve's. You can read the first chapter [here.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9058945)


End file.
